As fall approaches, their strategists will have to figure whether to make the abortion issue a major part of their campaigns or attempt to tamp it down as one that might put them in no-win situations.

Since 1973 politicians on both sides of the abortion issue have been able to hide comfortably behind the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade edict that gave women a right to abortion under carefully prescribed conditions.

Now, while Roe vs. Wade was not struck down, the court has tossed back to the states the right to put more stringent controls on its availability.

Most politicians like issues that can be compromised by reason or logic. It gives them a fallback position in case they can't get the whole pie. As LBJ said, "Come, let us reason together."

But abortion is an issue with little room for compromise. People are either for it or against it. Pro-choice people want a nearly unrestricted right to abortion. Pro-life people think abortion is immoral per se, although some would allow its use in cases of rape or incest.

For Wilder and Coleman - or others in political races - making abortion a high-profile issue inflames feelings among groups that have many members who are notoriously single-issue when it comes to elections.

In the minds of many political observers, neither Wilder nor Coleman has much to gain from a protracted abortion debate that overshadows other issues relating to Virginia's budget or roads or education or drug enforcement. Coleman already has the anti-abortion vote in his pocket and Wilder has the pro-choice vote. They have to reach out to that large body of voters whose feelings about abortion are more ambivalent and who will judge them on a myriad of issues and not just one.

After all, no member of the State Senate faces re-election until 1991 and that clearly means efforts to inject more state control of abortion as a result of the recent court ruling will fail. That's because a Senate committee that deals with such matters is solidly pro-choice. With more court pronouncements on abortion due in the future, a prospective governor can take note of that and try to defuse the issue.

Of course, politicians who attempt to keep abortion in the background will still have to contend with the pro-choice and pro-life activists who want to make it the major focus of both statewide and House of Delegates races in Virginia this year. They want spirited debate on the rights of women versus the rights of the unborn instead of chit-chat about budgetary procedures, commuter nightmares and the quality of educuation in public schools.

Although polls purport to show most people believe women have a right, with proper restrictions, to abortion, they also purport to show most of those surveyed think abortion is an immoral way of birth control.

Thus Virginia politicians operating in a state that is still basically conservative, don't have any real feel for how to play the abortion card. A two-edged sword can cut both ways.

Wilder and Coleman and strategists for other candidates are undoubtedly spending long hours this hot summer trying to determine approaches to an issue that seemed settled 16 years ago but has been resurrected by a far more conservative Supreme Court.

There may well be an unspoken mutual consent on both sides to play down abortion in the gubernatorial race and play up more traditional issues. Even so, the court has guaranteed that the issue will have a role of some kind, whether large or not, in the coming elections.

And not only that, it will be around in the state legislature for years to come. A fixture at the state Capitol come January will be groups of pro-choice and anti-abortion forces competing for the attention of legislators. The stage may be set for some ugly confrontations between the two groups.

* John Goolrick is a former political reporter who is now an aide to 7th District Rep. D. French Slaughter Jr., a Republican.